Just to come back this a bit. When you sand a piece, and then stain it, the stain gets soaked into the wood because the wood is porous. When that happens, usually the grain in the wood gets infused with the stain, soaks it in, expands and raises, making the surface of the wood less smooth than when it started, and it's still porous. This creates "potholes", for lack of a better term, in the wood surface. When you add poly, you're basically filling in the craters in the wood surface and sealing up the pores a bit. A clear/smooth/good finish happens when all of those potholes are filled in and you have a nice, smooth, even surface. When you spray on the poly, you are only applying a very, very thin coating of poly to the surface, which means it's not really filling in the surface all that much. If you were to paint it on, or wipe it on, more poly gets applied and more of the potholes get filled in. The sanding of the coats gets rid of the surface bumps as well as provides a nice adhesion surface for the next coat. Personally, I'd try and wipe or brush on the poly for first few coats to maximize how much the potholes are being filled in, and then use the spray on as a final coat to get a nice, light finishing layer without streaking. That will be the best ROI for you I think.
Awesome, thanks for the tip. Ill get the better quality stuff and a higher sand grain and give it a shot.
The only thing you have to be careful of is removing too much stain. Some stains don’t soak in and penetrate as well as you want/need due to it being a shitty stain or the wood not being a good stain receptor. That’s why they make a stain preconditioner that helps to open up the pores to accept lots if stain, evenly. If your stain job is superficial and shit, sanding, even lightly, can remove it more than you want. Just try it and see how it goes. If you fuck it up, just sand it down and start over. But you may want to try the process out on some scraps first to see how it goes.
This is also why I generally prefer Danish Oils. They are stains and varnish in one, and soak into the wood. That means the protection of a poly is not just superficial, it’s subsurface a bit as well.
Just re-sawed some purple heart and tested out my new in-table low profile clamps (using the t-tracks I embedded into the top) and it works out just as good as I was hoping it was going to. Looking at making my own thick-ish veneers for some cabinets and this is going to work out perfectly.
I have the typical Dewalt DW-735 planer that seems to be everywhere and is the de-facto standard for the hobbyist woodworker. I've been looking for a spiral/helical head replacement for it but they've been crazy expensive... as in, $600-$700 at best. Just found one on sale at a shop in Toronto... $350. Figured "what the hell" and pulled the trigger. It shows up on Friday. After spending a few hours this weekend planing some purple heart, zebra, and oak, and it being loud and taking forever, I'm really hoping the new helical carbide head will make as big a difference as everyone says it does. Here's an overview of what it is:
Just put my new spiral head cutter in my planer and holy shit does it rock. World of difference. Not sure if anyone here has a Dw735, but if you want an extra knife cutterhead and a set of new spare knives, hit me up and I’ll fire them your way.
It does... It still sounds the same when running without pushing any boards through, but it's a HUGE difference when running wood. Fantastic finish, I was able to push more of a cut than I would normally (1.5 turns instead of 1 turn max on a pine 2x6), and huge difference in noise. I ran it without ear protection and it had none of the really high-end, super loud straight knife sounds. The carbide cutters have a small curve to the edge which means it's not the entire blade hitting it all at once. Apparently it does take more power though... like an extra 15-20% amps... but it didn't seem to cause any problems for my 15a circuits.
Managed to finish my first woodworking project. I think I started this in October. Couldn't paint when the weather dropped. Then found out you have to let wall spackle (the wrong stuff to use) cure for 30 days before painting. Spoiler
Thanks y'all. It gave me a good taste of using a miter saw and cutting angles. I still had to spackle the shit out of the outside corners to make the seams flow and visually smooth. It was a great starter project and I used a video on youtube as my guide. It gave me the confidence to do another project. Once I'm finished with a couple other small projects around here I'll be working on an elevated dog bed for the foot of the bed to match the headboard.